For anyone who is so masochistic that driving a toothpick into the eye is not painful enough, you might want to watch Murphy’s video, which is 2 hours long.
Steve
1 year ago
Today, we also learn that the worst tragedy ever to befall the United Kingdom – the fire in the Holy Tower of Grenfell (PBUH) – was started by David Cameron reducing red tape:
Keir Starmer has said he wants a bonfire of red tape. That is the same goal that ended at Grenfell when David Cameron promoted it.
Also Ritchie’s theory of markets:
One is to simply make sure that everyone is treated equally. And in fact, of all the benefits of regulation, this is by far the most important. If markets in this country are to work, everybody has to work to common rules.
Ritchie is 66 and still doesn’t do self awareness:
So, why does Keir Starmer not know that?
Is it because he and most of his colleagues have never really worked in the real world where they’ve had to accept responsibility for the enforcement of regulation? I think that is a real risk.
And the rest is that they’re blinded by dogma.
Van_Patten
1 year ago
Steve
I have to say that post has made me so angry I need to take five minutes or so to compose myself. The notion that victims of the COVID vaccine, the Post Office scandal, various NHS scandals and the grooming gangs were ‘protected by regulation’ would be risible if it wasn’t so offensive.
Steve
1 year ago
VP – Candidly, buildings can’t catch fire if enough regulations are in place to stop buildings being built.
Holy Grenfell should be turned into a shrine for Guardian readers.
Boddicker
1 year ago
Strange how he thinks that some regulations eg regulations about individuals receiving charitable grants are to be circumvented when it comes to his vital work.
He is planning a tour / roadshow of his talks. Very David Brent.
Theophrastus
1 year ago
Presumably the ‘friends’ were Mr. Keen’s.
Yes, Peter.
Norman
1 year ago
Can anyone think of any other unremarkable apartment building that has been turned into a sarcophagus simply because it suffered a house fire? Because I can’t. And has the Fire Brigade always and without fail given correct, life-saving advice and instructions except for in this one, single instance?
So why has Grenfell acquired the status of a sacred icon? Those flats had each had a minimum of £70,000 spent on refurbishment before their upstanding, responsible occupants moved in. This is not the usual “deprivation” story.
bloke in spain
1 year ago
From what I’ve seen of the Grenfell inquiry, it seems to be settling on the manufacturers of the insulation products at fault.
The reason the building was insulated in the first place was red tape. And the whole insulation process was festooned with red tape from start to finish. The fire resistance specifications of the materials was another pile of red tape. What went wrong with the building was best practise. The subject everybody involved with it is trying to avoid in case it lands on them.
Baron Jackfield
1 year ago
ISTR that there were comments at the time that the insulation products used were all correctly “CE” marked and, as such, were not permitted to be tested further by “local” agencies.
Norman
1 year ago
Grenfell, built in the early ’70’s, was designed to contain a fire that originated in one of its flats, and would have done exactly that had it not been clad in insulation panels in such a way that a gap was left between the outer wall and inner surface of the panels.
This gap created a flue which drew air that both spread the fire and increased its intensity. This would have happened whether or not the panels were inflammable, although their flammability undoubtedly made things worse until they burned away. The insulation panels were added during its refurbishment because “climate crisis” and Net Zero, and destroyed the original design’s fire protection. All of this was signed off by the Great and Good including the hideous bitch who became Labour MP for the area.
As for the Fire Brigade advice to stay put rather than leg it down the stairs, I suspect the professional view was that the occupants were too fat, stupid, undisciplined or all three to leg it without breaking their necks. I’m inclined to be sympathetic to this view.
Van_Patten
1 year ago
Keir Starmer says he wants a bonfire of red tape. And I say he’s an idiot. Why am I quite so confident in my prediction? Because regulation exists for a purpose. That purpose is to deliver a number of benefits to society.
That’s a very broad statement. Regulation exists for a number of reasons – not all of which are a benefit to society. I do agree Starmer is an idiot.
One is to simply make sure that everyone is treated equally. And in fact, of all the benefits of regulation, this is by far the most important. If markets in this country are to work, everybody has to work to common rules. That is obvious, I would have thought.
Obviously we know his accountancy qualifications are fraudulent – the spat with the ICAEW confirms that he didn’t want to hang on to them. Has anyone got hard evidence he ran his own business? I don’t know any small business owner that would say regulation around ‘maternity leave’, ‘student loans administration’, ‘right to work’ and about a dozen other initiatives at a minimum since Blair that ‘gives thanks that they and a multinational with a four figure HR department are ‘treated equally’.
Starmer is a football fan. I follow football a bit. I know full well that if everybody plays to different offside rules, you would never have an effective game of football. You would just have a pile of fisticuffs, or worse still, absolutely no chance of anyone completing a game and having a fair competition.
I think he watched the game between Royal Engineers and the Wanderers. What a feeble analogy..
That’s what would happen if we got rid of regulation – regulation that everybody must comply with, which in other words means it must be enforced. It’s what is necessary for fair competition to take place. Get rid of it and unfair competition takes place. It is as simple as that.
Part of the issue is there are too many regulations of which many are enforced erratically if at all. The idea is to have effective regulation but the Legal profession, and especially fox killing allies are reluctant to allow any regulation to be repealed because it would set a precedent which would reduce demand for their service
Who benefits? Well, two lots of people benefit. One are the cheats, and they will take advantage of any lack of regulation to abuse us by selling counterfeit goods, by not paying their taxes, by undermining honest traders, by employing people in ways that are illicit and which therefore will expose them to risk, and on and on.
Yes – the regulations have really Been effective in reducing crime. You can see that when you are out in London all the time, so many tourists remark on ‘my word London is safe- must be all the regulation, dontcha know’
And the other group of people who will benefit will be large businesses, who will find the loopholes in these regulations, and walk their way through them. They will claim, of course, that their actions are entirely legitimate, just as they did with tax avoidance, which was a form of regulatory abuse. But nonetheless, just as tax avoidance created a cost to society, so will a burning of regulations do the same.
Weirdly even Polly Toynbee is more on board with reality than Murphy here. The CBI was an enthusiastic proponent and business as a whole was hugely in favour of ‘Remain, the EU being the largest single source of regulation on the planet. Murphy has said the exact opposite of the truth, as so often,
But there’s something quite different, much worse, about the language that he used. David Cameron said he wanted a bonfire of red tape. And we know where that ended. Grenfell Tower was where that ended. People died because insufficient building regulations were in place and ministers would not enforce them.
Of course a Grenfell had fuck all to do with illegal subletting, Fire exits being blocked, pisspoor management of the situation by fire officers. Just a lack of enforcement of regulation, I think even Stormzy had a more nuanced take.
They believed that for every regulation they brought in, they had to get rid of one. And the consequence was the terrible standards of cladding that were applied to that building, which cost people their lives. That’s where poor regulation takes us.
That’s not just wrong – it’s actively libellous. The guy simply does not have a fucking clue.
Regulation is essential to ensure that people are protected from abuse of all sorts. You can get rid of regulation, but what you do as a consequence is you transfer that risk. Regulation does not take risk away. Regulation manages risk. If the companies that create the risk don’t accept the responsibility for it, which is what this burning of red tape would mean, then somebody else is going to bear that risk.
This would not pass muster at Undergrad Law. Candidly, this is utter bollocks.
And that’s you. And that’s me. And I don’t want that. Because I don’t know about the risks that are being created in many of the products that are being created, because I don’t know about the risks that are being created in many of the products that I consume. And I’m quite certain you don’t either. And that’s why we require specialists to create regulations and to enforce them.
He has a touching faith in the ability of the regulators to understand what they are regulating – clearly he has never dealt with MIFiD for example. But perhaps my favourite example of this was during the pandemic. As my children were much younger then they enjoyed soft play centres. I can remember returning to one immediately after the lifting of lockdown.. I noticed the ‘ballpits’ which previously contained plastic balls were empty. Apparently in order to allow them to be used the plastic balls would have to have been washed every four hours. Amusing though the concept of a professional ‘ballwasher’ would have been, these businesses operate on very low margins. It was not feasible to have one of their limited staff doing that. Investigating this and other COVID regulations it was patently obvious none of the authors had been in a soft play centre in their lives. His claim is genuine bollocks
A government that does not believe in regulation does not believe in doing its job properly. It’s as simple and straightforward as that.
God knows I am no fan of Starmer, the worst leader in human history but that is not what he is saying and you’d have to be wilfully ignorant of have an ulterior motive to say that,
And I know that sometimes that regulation will feel burdensome and annoying and everything else. Oh, I know that. I’m no greater lover of doing my tax return than anybody else, but I know darn well we need them to be done. And I know that that’s true of all the other things where I have to comply with regulation to fulfil my duties when running a business.
Including setting up a company for your son to practice doing videos?
So, why does Keir Starmer not know that?
Is it because he and most of his colleagues have never really worked in the real world where they’ve had to accept responsibility for the enforcement of regulation? I think that is a real risk.
What real world experience have you had you grotesque fat bastard.
And the rest is that they’re blinded by dogma. They believe that a free market means one free of government interference.
Well, a market free of government interference is not free to do anything but to abuse us, and that’s what he’s promoting.
To suggest this government which has declared war on much of the country has done so by ‘under regulation’ when Muslim rapists are being released daily and people with no criminal history who write a nasty tweet are facing four years is beyond an outrage. Sorry editor but I am sincerely hoping, regulation or not, this guy ends up dangling from a rope. He is the most evil being extant in Britain today – utterly and completely bereft of any redeeming features.
bloke in spain
1 year ago
@Norman
I’ve been involved in fire spread prevention in hundreds of building. Whatever you do, you’ve always got that at the back of your mind. What you’re talking about is compartmentalisation. What V-P’s taking about lack of, with wedged open fire doors & inflammable materials in escape routes. We’ve taken extreme measures when we’ve run services between compartments. Intumescent seals that expand with heat to seal apertures where pipes past through walls. The same seals around fire doors between compartments. This is all just best practise. If it wasn’t there the architects designed it out. Maybe it wasn’t compatible with the requirement to having the building tenanted throughout the works? They believed that for every regulation they brought in, they had to get rid of one. And the consequence was the terrible standards of cladding that were applied to that building, which cost people their lives. That’s where poor regulation takes us.
Actually V-P I think he’s quite right there. It’s red tape that required the insulation of the building in the first place. From there, you’re buried in red tape on how to do it. Much of which will be conflicting. Regulation isn’t any use if it doesn’t apply to what you’re doing. And on top of that will be the budget constraints. Truth is, the project was probably non-viable, right from the start. Don’t forget another heap of red tape which is Building Control &/or the Fire Brigade will have signed off that building.
Oh & of course the other big heap of red tape got ignored. Who & how many people were living in the building, regular inspections of the individual dwellings etc. All part of fire prevention & safety.
Steve
1 year ago
So why has Grenfell acquired the status of a sacred icon?
For the same reason you’re supposed to venerate the Windrush, or Baroness Lawrence of Clarendon OBE.
Presumably the ‘friends’ were Mr. Keen’s.
Very good RichardT.
For anyone who is so masochistic that driving a toothpick into the eye is not painful enough, you might want to watch Murphy’s video, which is 2 hours long.
Today, we also learn that the worst tragedy ever to befall the United Kingdom – the fire in the Holy Tower of Grenfell (PBUH) – was started by David Cameron reducing red tape:
Keir Starmer has said he wants a bonfire of red tape. That is the same goal that ended at Grenfell when David Cameron promoted it.
Also Ritchie’s theory of markets:
One is to simply make sure that everyone is treated equally. And in fact, of all the benefits of regulation, this is by far the most important. If markets in this country are to work, everybody has to work to common rules.
Ritchie is 66 and still doesn’t do self awareness:
So, why does Keir Starmer not know that?
Is it because he and most of his colleagues have never really worked in the real world where they’ve had to accept responsibility for the enforcement of regulation? I think that is a real risk.
And the rest is that they’re blinded by dogma.
Steve
I have to say that post has made me so angry I need to take five minutes or so to compose myself. The notion that victims of the COVID vaccine, the Post Office scandal, various NHS scandals and the grooming gangs were ‘protected by regulation’ would be risible if it wasn’t so offensive.
VP – Candidly, buildings can’t catch fire if enough regulations are in place to stop buildings being built.
Holy Grenfell should be turned into a shrine for Guardian readers.
Strange how he thinks that some regulations eg regulations about individuals receiving charitable grants are to be circumvented when it comes to his vital work.
He is planning a tour / roadshow of his talks. Very David Brent.
Presumably the ‘friends’ were Mr. Keen’s.
Yes, Peter.
Can anyone think of any other unremarkable apartment building that has been turned into a sarcophagus simply because it suffered a house fire? Because I can’t. And has the Fire Brigade always and without fail given correct, life-saving advice and instructions except for in this one, single instance?
So why has Grenfell acquired the status of a sacred icon? Those flats had each had a minimum of £70,000 spent on refurbishment before their upstanding, responsible occupants moved in. This is not the usual “deprivation” story.
From what I’ve seen of the Grenfell inquiry, it seems to be settling on the manufacturers of the insulation products at fault.
The reason the building was insulated in the first place was red tape. And the whole insulation process was festooned with red tape from start to finish. The fire resistance specifications of the materials was another pile of red tape. What went wrong with the building was best practise. The subject everybody involved with it is trying to avoid in case it lands on them.
ISTR that there were comments at the time that the insulation products used were all correctly “CE” marked and, as such, were not permitted to be tested further by “local” agencies.
Grenfell, built in the early ’70’s, was designed to contain a fire that originated in one of its flats, and would have done exactly that had it not been clad in insulation panels in such a way that a gap was left between the outer wall and inner surface of the panels.
This gap created a flue which drew air that both spread the fire and increased its intensity. This would have happened whether or not the panels were inflammable, although their flammability undoubtedly made things worse until they burned away. The insulation panels were added during its refurbishment because “climate crisis” and Net Zero, and destroyed the original design’s fire protection. All of this was signed off by the Great and Good including the hideous bitch who became Labour MP for the area.
As for the Fire Brigade advice to stay put rather than leg it down the stairs, I suspect the professional view was that the occupants were too fat, stupid, undisciplined or all three to leg it without breaking their necks. I’m inclined to be sympathetic to this view.
Keir Starmer says he wants a bonfire of red tape. And I say he’s an idiot. Why am I quite so confident in my prediction? Because regulation exists for a purpose. That purpose is to deliver a number of benefits to society.
That’s a very broad statement. Regulation exists for a number of reasons – not all of which are a benefit to society. I do agree Starmer is an idiot.
One is to simply make sure that everyone is treated equally. And in fact, of all the benefits of regulation, this is by far the most important. If markets in this country are to work, everybody has to work to common rules. That is obvious, I would have thought.
Obviously we know his accountancy qualifications are fraudulent – the spat with the ICAEW confirms that he didn’t want to hang on to them. Has anyone got hard evidence he ran his own business? I don’t know any small business owner that would say regulation around ‘maternity leave’, ‘student loans administration’, ‘right to work’ and about a dozen other initiatives at a minimum since Blair that ‘gives thanks that they and a multinational with a four figure HR department are ‘treated equally’.
Starmer is a football fan. I follow football a bit. I know full well that if everybody plays to different offside rules, you would never have an effective game of football. You would just have a pile of fisticuffs, or worse still, absolutely no chance of anyone completing a game and having a fair competition.
I think he watched the game between Royal Engineers and the Wanderers. What a feeble analogy..
That’s what would happen if we got rid of regulation – regulation that everybody must comply with, which in other words means it must be enforced. It’s what is necessary for fair competition to take place. Get rid of it and unfair competition takes place. It is as simple as that.
Part of the issue is there are too many regulations of which many are enforced erratically if at all. The idea is to have effective regulation but the Legal profession, and especially fox killing allies are reluctant to allow any regulation to be repealed because it would set a precedent which would reduce demand for their service
Who benefits? Well, two lots of people benefit. One are the cheats, and they will take advantage of any lack of regulation to abuse us by selling counterfeit goods, by not paying their taxes, by undermining honest traders, by employing people in ways that are illicit and which therefore will expose them to risk, and on and on.
Yes – the regulations have really Been effective in reducing crime. You can see that when you are out in London all the time, so many tourists remark on ‘my word London is safe- must be all the regulation, dontcha know’
And the other group of people who will benefit will be large businesses, who will find the loopholes in these regulations, and walk their way through them. They will claim, of course, that their actions are entirely legitimate, just as they did with tax avoidance, which was a form of regulatory abuse. But nonetheless, just as tax avoidance created a cost to society, so will a burning of regulations do the same.
Weirdly even Polly Toynbee is more on board with reality than Murphy here. The CBI was an enthusiastic proponent and business as a whole was hugely in favour of ‘Remain, the EU being the largest single source of regulation on the planet. Murphy has said the exact opposite of the truth, as so often,
But there’s something quite different, much worse, about the language that he used. David Cameron said he wanted a bonfire of red tape. And we know where that ended. Grenfell Tower was where that ended. People died because insufficient building regulations were in place and ministers would not enforce them.
Of course a Grenfell had fuck all to do with illegal subletting, Fire exits being blocked, pisspoor management of the situation by fire officers. Just a lack of enforcement of regulation, I think even Stormzy had a more nuanced take.
They believed that for every regulation they brought in, they had to get rid of one. And the consequence was the terrible standards of cladding that were applied to that building, which cost people their lives. That’s where poor regulation takes us.
That’s not just wrong – it’s actively libellous. The guy simply does not have a fucking clue.
Regulation is essential to ensure that people are protected from abuse of all sorts. You can get rid of regulation, but what you do as a consequence is you transfer that risk. Regulation does not take risk away. Regulation manages risk. If the companies that create the risk don’t accept the responsibility for it, which is what this burning of red tape would mean, then somebody else is going to bear that risk.
This would not pass muster at Undergrad Law. Candidly, this is utter bollocks.
And that’s you. And that’s me. And I don’t want that. Because I don’t know about the risks that are being created in many of the products that are being created, because I don’t know about the risks that are being created in many of the products that I consume. And I’m quite certain you don’t either. And that’s why we require specialists to create regulations and to enforce them.
He has a touching faith in the ability of the regulators to understand what they are regulating – clearly he has never dealt with MIFiD for example. But perhaps my favourite example of this was during the pandemic. As my children were much younger then they enjoyed soft play centres. I can remember returning to one immediately after the lifting of lockdown.. I noticed the ‘ballpits’ which previously contained plastic balls were empty. Apparently in order to allow them to be used the plastic balls would have to have been washed every four hours. Amusing though the concept of a professional ‘ballwasher’ would have been, these businesses operate on very low margins. It was not feasible to have one of their limited staff doing that. Investigating this and other COVID regulations it was patently obvious none of the authors had been in a soft play centre in their lives. His claim is genuine bollocks
A government that does not believe in regulation does not believe in doing its job properly. It’s as simple and straightforward as that.
God knows I am no fan of Starmer, the worst leader in human history but that is not what he is saying and you’d have to be wilfully ignorant of have an ulterior motive to say that,
And I know that sometimes that regulation will feel burdensome and annoying and everything else. Oh, I know that. I’m no greater lover of doing my tax return than anybody else, but I know darn well we need them to be done. And I know that that’s true of all the other things where I have to comply with regulation to fulfil my duties when running a business.
Including setting up a company for your son to practice doing videos?
So, why does Keir Starmer not know that?
Is it because he and most of his colleagues have never really worked in the real world where they’ve had to accept responsibility for the enforcement of regulation? I think that is a real risk.
What real world experience have you had you grotesque fat bastard.
And the rest is that they’re blinded by dogma. They believe that a free market means one free of government interference.
Well, a market free of government interference is not free to do anything but to abuse us, and that’s what he’s promoting.
To suggest this government which has declared war on much of the country has done so by ‘under regulation’ when Muslim rapists are being released daily and people with no criminal history who write a nasty tweet are facing four years is beyond an outrage. Sorry editor but I am sincerely hoping, regulation or not, this guy ends up dangling from a rope. He is the most evil being extant in Britain today – utterly and completely bereft of any redeeming features.
@Norman
I’ve been involved in fire spread prevention in hundreds of building. Whatever you do, you’ve always got that at the back of your mind. What you’re talking about is compartmentalisation. What V-P’s taking about lack of, with wedged open fire doors & inflammable materials in escape routes. We’ve taken extreme measures when we’ve run services between compartments. Intumescent seals that expand with heat to seal apertures where pipes past through walls. The same seals around fire doors between compartments. This is all just best practise. If it wasn’t there the architects designed it out. Maybe it wasn’t compatible with the requirement to having the building tenanted throughout the works?
They believed that for every regulation they brought in, they had to get rid of one. And the consequence was the terrible standards of cladding that were applied to that building, which cost people their lives. That’s where poor regulation takes us.
Actually V-P I think he’s quite right there. It’s red tape that required the insulation of the building in the first place. From there, you’re buried in red tape on how to do it. Much of which will be conflicting. Regulation isn’t any use if it doesn’t apply to what you’re doing. And on top of that will be the budget constraints. Truth is, the project was probably non-viable, right from the start. Don’t forget another heap of red tape which is Building Control &/or the Fire Brigade will have signed off that building.
Oh & of course the other big heap of red tape got ignored. Who & how many people were living in the building, regular inspections of the individual dwellings etc. All part of fire prevention & safety.
So why has Grenfell acquired the status of a sacred icon?
For the same reason you’re supposed to venerate the Windrush, or Baroness Lawrence of Clarendon OBE.